I saw an ad for an ‘84 GTI which I thought was a steal at $500 especially since it came with a Maryland inspection (if this story rings a bell to anyone who may have lived in the Waldorf area some time in 1991 to 1992, I secretly hate your guts). The silver paint and even the interior were decent. I was 19 years old so, of course, I knew what I was doing and handed over my hard-earned money. I may have said, “SUCKERS!” under my breath. If I was in a cartoon, it would’ve been MY head that turned into a donkey’s head, braying with ignorant delight.

Well, it wasn’t until after I bought the car that I noticed part of the engine bay had some heavy-duty masking tape which was spray painted black right around where the driver’s side strut was mounted. I thought, “that’s weird.” and didn’t pay it any mind. I may have even thought they did a good job at fixing what was damaged since I barely noticed it. So, while driving to a friend’s house one day, I hear a clunking noise and lost the ability to accelerate. The CV joint on the driver’s side had broken. I assumed, at the time, it was due to normal wear and tear (“You know what happens when you ‘assume’ ”, Mr, Kotter could be heard saying inside my donkey head.). After a self-taught lesson on replacing CV axles I was back on the road...for about a month when it broke again. It was at this point that I started to put two and two together. I fixed it, again, and this time drove to the house where I bought it from to get some questions answered. I saw someone inside but they clearly didn’t want to answer the door because I’m sure they knew why I was there.

I sighed, chalked it up to experience, and just left. On the way to work, the CV joint broke leaving me stranded on the side of the highway during morning commuter traffic, only this time, I had it towed to the VW dealership in Tyson’s Corner and traded it in for a brand new 8v GTI and was able to get the value of what I had originally paid for it. Thanks also to my dad for co-signing that car for me!

The ‘92 GTI was the first new car I ever owned and that year was the last time I ever bought a used car from a private seller.

The first used car I bought from a dealership? Well, that’s a different ass story.

I had a ‘94 Civic. 235k miles. Ran like a charm, never any engine issues, always changed oil/filter myself religiously, mostly synthetics. I was buying oil at Autozone and let myself get talked into buying Seafoam. Read the bottle and it said you can add to your oil, then change the oil ~50miles later. Which I did. Couple weeks later my family is 80 miles into a cross country move and I’m driving the Civic. Oil light comes on. We were next to an exit right at that time, managed to get it to a shop. They dropped the oil pan and said the oil screen was full of all kind of gunk, oil wasn’t getting through. They cleaned it out, replaced oil, put me back on the road. 80-100miles later, same thing. Except the engine blew.

Buying 3 piece wheels.... Holy shit never again... Unless you work with all new hardware they will leak. Hardware is expensive, they are not strong(that’s why they’re lite). Very labor intensive ($$$$). But they hold their value if they arent damaged.

Easy - the time I bought a 1993 Dakota off Craigslist. After looking at it it looked rusty but trusty, didn’t see any noticeable issues, and a test drive confirmed that it was driving fine. We agreed on a price (well under what the hell money). He had to “switch the title” and I needed to get money so we agreed to meet a few days later to complete the transaction.

Red Flag #1 - The seller calls me to set up a time to meet and ask several times if I am still interested in the truck and if I really am interested in the truck. I said yes and assume he just wants to pull the CL ad and be sure I am not going to vanish.

Red Flag #2 - The day the sale is to go down we speak on the phone to confirm the sale is happening. The seller again asks several times if I really want the truck. I think this is weird. But not enough to stop the sale.

Red Flag #3 - I get to the sellers house and the truck (which was parked on the street before) is now parked on his lawn. To those that it is not complete obvious to, if this ever happens to you, tell the seller to fuck himself and run as fast as you can (note - this was not a neighborhood where people would normally park on grass, he went through the extra effort to drive over the curb to get on the grass).

Red Flag #4 - I don’t believe I ever got the guys name, but I am pretty sure this heavy set, middle aged white man’s name was not along the lines of LaFonda Sanchez. Like it said on the title. Like I had asked several times before if his name was on the title. I still bought the truck.

Thankfully I was able to switch the title to my name but I was not surprised to get the truck home and find a puddle of transmission fluid underneath it. Nor was I shocked to find that it ran like complete shit above 55mph. Or that 4WD didn’t work. I tried a tune up and did end up (mostly) fixing the transmission leak but gave up after I put gas in it and it mostly ended up in the gas station parking lot. I threw it up on CL again and ended up selling it to the shadiest fucks of all time for $325 bucks and one hell of a lesson learned. I also made a huge mistake by not absolutely destroying that truck at a redneck friends house (demo derby, jumps, baja, shooting it with guns) and then scrapping it.

Most of my bad ideas/experiences involve Illinois. I live in Missouri and the worst was probably going about 3 hours into southern IL for a 62 Willys CJ6 that I was planning on flat towing back. I got there, made a deal and stared prepping it to tow.

We had to remove the bound up rear drive shaft and hunted for lug nuts to secure the wheels. The problem was the front drivers side. They are left hand thread on the old Jeeps and we only had two of them. On top if it a couple studs were stripped so we could only put them right next to each other. I figured if I took it easy it would be alright.

I made it 30 miles and needed gas, when it pulled in I felt the jeep pull a little to the side, figured I took the turn too sharp. I gassed up, got supplies and got back on the road made it about 5 miles and the hub broke. I felt it and then saw the drivers side dip slightly in my mirror. It was a Sunday and no parts store within 100 miles was open. Time to call for a tow. I ended up waiting for 4 hours for a truck in 105 degree heat and no A/C in the grass off of a two lane rural Illinois highway.

The tow cost me half what I payed for the Jeep! I still have the jeep and have made a good deal of progress, but I haven’t quite forgiven it for the day we met...

1. Bought any car to “fix up”- Bought a Jeep Wrangler. Thought they were easy to wrench on and hard to break. Paid more than the purchase price in repairs before I drove 10 miles. Then decided I needed to modify it. Lifts, wheels, tires, etc. and b now I spent 4 times the purchase price. Thing keeps falling apart on me. Crappiest car I ever bought. Bought a 2nd gen camaro. Thought I’d start system by system. Built the engine, disc brakes, new interior, etc. Should have worried about rust. Thing rusted out and was scrapped with about $8000 in new parts on it.

2. “Modded up my car”. 3000GT Vr4. Loved it. modding it would make me love it more right? Lowered it and put on a body kit. Couldn’t drive it anywhere, even normal roads it would get damaged. Ended up tearing off the front bumper and had to replace it with another one. thought race seats and a race steering wheel would be cool. Couldn’t fit in it well afterwards. After dumping about 6000 in mods, I couldn’t enjoy it or drive it anymore and it sat in my garage for years. Decided to sell it. Since it wouldn’t pass emissions due to its mods, sold it for HUNDREDS (literally under $1000). There’s about 10 major mistakes there.

3. Bought a Ferrari. need I say more? thought I could afford it. Cost me about $3000 every time I drove it. It was painful. CEL one time for cats, $5000. Cooling problem- $2000. Belt service, $4000. I listened to doug. he said they were reliable. 500 miles and $20k later in repairs and I’m ready to sell it.

Buying this Volvo wagon at night, in the rain. Looked fine from a distance, but once I got it up on a lift and poked around underneath I discovered the rot. Then, after doing some work on the car and scheduling to have the floors repaired, it barfed the cam plug out of the back of the head. Then the electrical system reared its ugly head. Fun car, especially in the snow, but ultimately my worst automotive decision. Kept it for a few months before giving it away to a guy who rebuilt the wiring harness and gave it to his mother.

I bought a 72 Econoline van for $401 dollars in the mountains of Vermont to drive back to Chicago. I had to haul a bunch of shit back (other people’s shit) and they wouldn’t rent me a truck at the nearest U-Haul because I was not 21, out of state and probably didn’t have a valid license or something silly like that.

Nobody knew how long the van had been sitting, but the rear end was definitely partly submerged in the mud. So it was just about sunk up to its rockers. The plan was to start it up before attempting to dislodge it from the mountain. After making a simple wiring harness for the ignition and starter using some toggle switches and pouring some gas in the carb, it fired up. The oil looked old but serviceable until I could get it back to the farm. It had a 240 or 300 CID straight six, don’t know which one. It did pull itself out of the mud under its own power, so the engine and trans appeared to be at least serviceable. It had bald tires so I switched out the rears with some used ones that had a little more tread. I knew it was leaking oil, but had no leakdown or compression test equipment. The spark plugs were pretty well oil fouled, if it had rings at all they were too worn out to make much power, but it was able to crawl up the mountain roads without the trans slipping or blowing smoke so I figured for the mostly flat ride home it would survive.

However with blowby comes oil consumption, so a few of the cylinders which may or may not have been firing were just pumping a fine oil mist out of the tail pipe. I was driving it around the mountain for a while and didn’t notice any serious oil consumption. But once we got out on the highway on the way home, it would blow out 5 quarts in about 2 hours if we were light on the gas pedal. There were no working gauges, so the only indication that the oil was gone was the engine power dropping suddenly as the crank and bearings came into direct contact. The solution was to stop ever few hours, add 5 quarts and go.

It did actually make it to my folk’s driveway, surprising everyone aboard. However we all likely developed lung cancer on the way home from breathing the oil mist cloud that formed around the van at highway speeds. It also had serious rot/holes in the floor and sides, which were good for sucking that oil cloud back into the interior. At least we had a half mattress in the back for driver breaks and a few towels to act as air filters. I ended up giving the van to a scrapper for nothing.

It wasn’t so much a poor decision as it was the only solution available at the time. I could have paid much less, knowing the state of the engine, but I was enchanted with the girl I bought it from, and she was as broke as I was and had two daughters and a parrot to feed.

A million years ago but I went to a local foreign car lot with my old Fiat and $400, and naively told them exactly what I had and that I wanted to trade for something more reliable. I was offered a 1963 MG 1100 sedan or an 1958 Mercedes 190SL. I was no fool so of course I took the newer car.

(And no, just owning an SM is not the worst automotive decision, but owning 2 of them might be.)

While swapping in a new radiator, I removed the metal cans on the radiator fan motors and painted them, because pretty. I put them back on wrong and swapped the polarity of the magnets. The fans then ran backwards and I didn’t notice.

The symptoms were befuddling: Engine temp would be ok around town in traffic, but if I got on the highway with the fans running, they’d block air flow and I’d overheat. Other times I could get on the highway before the engine temp turned the fans on and the car would run great on the highway.

I thought maybe a thermostat was intermittently sticking, so I replaced that. I ended up replacing the radiator again, flushed the system, numerous times, etc. (Removing and replacing the radiator is about a 4 hour job.) I’d pretty much given up after a month of troubleshooting and wrenching in my free time and decided it had to be a head gasket, head or block coolant leak. Then one night in my garage wearing flip flops (which I normally never do), I suddenly realized while standing in front of the running car that my feet were being blasted by super hot air. The discovery was both relieving and annoying.

15 minutes later the fan leads were swapped with a solder gun and swears. It wasn’t worth it, but those fan motor cans sure do look pretty.

Black cars. Don’t ask me why, but my experience with black or dark colored cars has been nothing short of nightmarish. Here’s just a few of the weird things I’ve had happen with black painted cars:

-1990 240SX: It was a used project when I bought it, but I’ve killed an engine, two transmissions, a clutch, a turbo, and had all sorts of weird plumbing and wiring failures. I’ve also had a wheel fall off even when the lug nuts were torqued the day before (with a torque wrench I might add). I’ve written about this car before, I am still determined to save it. I’m considering doing a rattle can spray job to see if that fixes most of its problems.

-1997 Honda Accord: A tree branch about a foot long and as thick as my wrist hit the back window and shattered it. It was a big rain storm and not a single other car in the lot was damaged.

-CRC Carpet Knife: This is an R/C pan car I had and I painted one of the bodies black. I won my very first race in that body and then in the next heat, the batteries could no longer hold a full charge. I had a bunch of bad luck with crashes and breakages. A year later I painted a new body red and blue. Won the main the first race I attended and it’s been rock solid ever since.

-2005 Subaru WRX STi: Actually my friend’s car. Very nice used example, single owner when he got it. After a couple months it started running really poorly. Turns out the rings had been damaged on cylinder 3 before he bought it and the issue didn’t get really bad until he beat on it a bit. The dealer took it back despite selling it with no warranty.

-2010 FSAE car: this car had a weird ass brake problem and would not lock all four wheels under hard braking. An SAE rule is that all four wheels must lock under the brake test. This car spent 3 days attempting it and failing. It never drove again, we cut it up for parts the moment we got home.

-2012 FSAE car: Despite my insistence that black cars are bad luck, they did another black car. We did complete competition, but were the slowest car in the field. We also spent all week fixing broken stuff. The following year during practice and testing, we never went more than half a test session without a breakage. The nail in the coffin was its final test where it built up so much crankcase pressure it filled its 1 quart oil catch can and began pissing all over the track.

-2007 Mazdaspeed 3: This was supposed to be my new daily driver. Currently, it is dead in the driveway with a misfire that only occurs when I am driving it. A misfire so bad it feels like the engine is completely shutting off. The car was a 2-owner, low mileage example that had been well maintained (for a while) and had lots of service records. The cruise control never worked right (it would shut off if you hit the turn signals). The subframe looks like it came off the Titanic, but the rest of the chassis is mint. I fixed my damaged front bumper (it had been curbed and Mazda uses surprisingly brittle plastic) and the very next morning I hit a possum on the highway. Credit to my bumper repairs, the bumper was fine, but my belly pan was not. It then spent 2 weeks in the shop trying to diagnose a brake problem (I later narrowed it to the brake booster, an issue that turns out is incredibly common to Mazdas, but one that is often misdiagnosed and not recalled). And literally a few days after getting that fixed, the misfire started. No CEL and it seems to go away when the dealer plugs a service computer into it.

I have no idea why my luck with black cars is so awful, but I refuse to buy another. The worst part is the 3 isn’t even black, it’s dark gray. Guess that was close enough...

I put an intake, headers, and exhaust on it. Result? My wallet was almost $1,000 lighter and the car made approximately 0 additional horsepower. The car had a horrible weedwhacker exhaust note and an awful freeway drone. I then added a big brake kit despite never having tracked the car (because bling), a set of heavy Mazdaspeed protege wheels which I paid too much for and Mazdaspeed protege springs which caused the rear to sag. I swapped out motor mounts with poly so the car was ridiculously harsh (because racecar!). Huge rear swaybar and spherical endlinks caused a clunk that never went away. I was close to adding a Mazdaspeed turbo setup- even had the parts assembled. Then, I blew another $1,000 installing a homebrew car computer that never worked right (it was 2005, after all, and it was running windows XP).

This was when I was in my late teens/early 20s with very little money. All, bad decisions.

But, this car was easy to work on and taught me to work on cars. It was never fast, but that’s probably why I’m still alive today. I owe my current car hobby to the bad decisions of my youth. Just wish I had spent all that money on Auto X fees and track time.

Friend of my brother bought a used ambulance at a government auction to use for his plumbing business, the name of which was “The Drip Doctor.” (Doctor.... ambulance....get it?)

The new owner soon realized that whoever removed the medical and electrical equipment was none too gentle - my brother and his friend spent a couple of days sorting through the wiring and patching holes so that the lights worked correctly and water didn’t leak into the cabin.

The second thing he found was that ambulances are generally ridden hard for short periods of time, then put away wet, so the 70,000 miles on the odometer did not reflect the abuse the neglect the drivetrain had been subjected to.

Impulse buying an extremely low mileage example of a 13 year old car, simply out of nostalgia for my very first car. This car caused me to not have the money available to buy my actual and very rare (realistic) dream car. I ended up putting 5k miles on it over 2 years and selling it for exactly what I paid, but I missed the opportunity to buy the one car I really wanted. I settled on another one with the wrong options, the wrong color, and in slightly less good shape.

I bought a 7 year old RX-7 Turbo in 1994. Low torque, low MPG, high oil consumption, and that was after the engine rebuild. I blame the Versacad drawing program and their cut-away RX-7 diagram (which I wish I could find a video of, but can’t). It sure looked cool though, and I saw it everyday at Radio Shack (where I worked in college). Fuck rotary engines.